Homelab over certification, easily. The best engineers I know never held a cert. Some hiring managers consider it a negative signal. It's the same problem with bootcamp coders - it's a signal that you need to be explicitly instructed to learn, versus being able to self-start and learn organically.
Have you considered using a cloud VM? Oracle Cloud Infrastructure gives them for free for personal use: https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/
Oracle Linux is basically RHEL (rebranded) under the hood.
Could you practice your RHEL sysadmin skills on an Oracle Linux cloud VM?
I can indeed but I don't have credit/debit card for even using the free tier.
Could you use a Nabil bank dollar card, as described in https://www.reddit.com/r/technepal/comments/13edy7i/oracle_f... ?
Homelab over certification, easily. The best engineers I know never held a cert. Some hiring managers consider it a negative signal. It's the same problem with bootcamp coders - it's a signal that you need to be explicitly instructed to learn, versus being able to self-start and learn organically.